OT: Delivery service too good!

Tracked 24 doesn't need a signature. If you want that you need to pay for Tracked 24 With Signature (another £1.50 or so). Also the insurance on Tracked is only £150 so above that is Special Delivery territory.

Theo

"Tracked" is not "Signed for", but they should take a photo

Interesting. I hadn't realised some Tracked 24 is without a signature. Online, I see there's also a signature version. Same goes for Tracked

2. I don't know about any photo being taken as I wasn't given a tracking number by the seller. In the case of a book, would a photo show much more than a letterbox?

There should be a barcode with a number like ABnnnnnnnGB on it, which you can look up the tracking for and there may be a photo shown. Usually they want to take a photo of the open door (but not the face of the person receiving) - if it was shoved through the letterbox then I suppose they'll have a photo of the closed door instead.

(I've occasionally had something misdelivered and managed to work out where it went from the door picture and Streetview...)

Theo

The label usually states if it needs to be signed for.

In my experience the photo taken by RM doesn't show a photo of the recipient or in a location. They seem to take a photo of the package held in the postman's hand. A RM tracked package often results in an email minutes later stating the package has been delivered.

Indeed. When I asked ours about it, he said the treatment he received from other drivers was markedly worse than when he drove a proper RM van. He put it down to drivers being anti-White Van Man.

A couple of years ago, I had to send a Tax Form to the IRS in Texas. The main couriers, DHL, FedEx, UPS etc all require the name of the intended recipient, which of course is impossible to supply, the IRS won't even bother to answer such a request. So I opted to send the envelope 'Tracked and Signed for'. A combination of being stuck in Manchester for a week or more, then once in the US, sitting in Chicago admiring the view of Lake Michigan, meant that it eventually arrived 53 DAYS after I posted it. But I did get a message to tell me that it had been delivered. I have no idea who signed for it, just an IRS employee.

Nowadays, I just send the form via normal Overseas Mail Delivery, with a Proof of Posting.

When I asked a postman, a couple of years ago, why the service had become eratic he said it was because it was cheaper for the company to pay the penalties for missing Ofcom targets that it was to fil vacancies.

That sounds exactly the position we are in. We get a bunch of letters all at once, some of which we think have taken 10 days to arrive.

Except we are in a village of perhaps 100 houses, not an urban area.

Andy

The most common response from the GPO when anyone wanted a new phone connection in the 70's was "There are no spare pairs. If you wait long enough you might get a party line".

Then the GPO 'invented' a new way of supplying party lines where the two? subscribers were hidden from each other by frequency allocation.

Great. So when a cousin was given one of these lines and had to work at home (employed by WS Atkins as a technical draughtsman) using a dialup modem, it didn't work because of the constricted bandwidth on the line.

Still a problem if you live in the BN (Brighton) postcode area I believe

Stobart used to plastic-wrap their HGV tractors in the famous red and green livery, so they could just 'unwrap' them for resale.

Ours is white but says Enterprise Car Rentals or similar.

Similar here, Andy (small village): just in the last few weeks we've begun to notice that post comes as Alan_M describes it. "We've never seen anything on the news" about this fundmental change.

I never understood (on moral grounds) why, when they flogged off The Royal Mail, they sold the name with it. I don't think I'd be so disgruntled about the service going down the toilet, if it wasn't still called Royal Mail. Along with several other things, a mainstay of my (British) life when I was younger.

J.

I get mail delivered in batches...the important letters marked 'NHS' come with a bunch of other peoples marketing crap, I don't think Postperson Pat has any compunction about letting circulars pile up.

Perhaps we've been lucky here - in an urban area about a mile from the sorting/delivery office. For most of the past year we've had deliveries several times a week, and often every day. But about a month ago that stopped and we got nothing for about 2 weeks. I eventually discovered a telephone number for complaints 0345 774 0740 and tried it. It took over 20 minutes to connect to a human but it was useful. The assistant said there were indeed local staff shortages and promised a delivery of all outstanding items as soon as they could manage it. Two days later we got 23 letters, some clearly had been waiting for about the whole fortnight. Since then - one or two deliveries per week. The promised response to my complaint by email (I gave my email address when on the phone) has not arrived.

Local online media suggest that there is indeed a staff shortage compounded by management choice: if a postal deliverer leaves or goes on holiday nobody replaces them.

So please all of you complain: it might provide a temporary solution.

Postman pat cannot put circulars through you letter box on the days he doesn't visit your street or district :)

There is also a problem in very rural areas where friends of mine live in that the the rounds are often 50 miles miles of travelling. It takes quite a while to learn the round and that farm X is down a 2 miles single lane mud track etc. When someone new has to cover these types of round they have to be accompanied for a few days. Old hands may know half a dozen rounds of this type but often when short staffed new hands are thrown in to the deep end and staff retention becomes a problem. Many of the old hands in the said depot are close to retirement and new posties don't remain in the job very long. Around my way in a large town I never see the same postman. Its a few years now since my street had a regular postman.